They’ve dealt with earthquakes, tsunamis, cruise ship disasters, and even animals escaping from a zoo. But in the season 8 premiere, the firefighters of 9-1-1 will face something they’ve never seen before: 22 million killer bees released on Los Angeles.
“We just wanted to make some noise,” 9-1-1 co-creator and showrunner Tim Minear joked to Entertainment Weekly about the decision to have the disaster open the season on ABC’s first responder drama.
In the first preview clip exclusive to EW (above), boxes of bees are tipped over in a truck crash, and 911 dispatcher Josh (Bryan Safi) tells Maddie (Jennifer Love Hewitt) that there are enough of the fleeing insects to kill 44,000 people. (An earlier trailer for season 8 stated that “the average person can’t survive 500 bee stings.”) In the clip, set to the Phil Collins song “In the Air Tonight,” a newly mustachioed Eddie (Ryan Guzman) asks 9-1-1 firefighters Buck (Oliver Stark), Chimney (Kenneth Choi), and Hen (Aisha Hinds) if they think the bees will “fly away.” “Not likely,” Hen replies.
As EW previously reported, 9-1-1 returns on September 26 with every member of the 9-1-1 crew facing a crisis: Bobby (Peter Krause) is forced to come out of retirement and take a job as a technical advisor on an action TV show called Hotshots (which is awesome!); he and Athena (Angela Bassett) are looking for a new home after theirs burned down in arson at the end of season 7; Buck is stunned when Gerrard (Brian Thompson) is appointed as the new captain of the 118th; Maddie and Chimney are doing everything they can to keep Hen and Karen (Tracie Thoms) in their adopted daughter Mara’s life despite the efforts of Councilwoman Ortiz (Verónica Falcón), who is now running for mayor; and is grieving over his son moving to Texas.
